I Won't Be Long
by Lady Aeryn
Summary: Padmé's perspective as she watches Anakin leave to search for Shmi. (AOTC)


I Won't Be Long 

**By:** Lady Aeryn

**Category:** Angst/Romance/Vignette

**Rating:** PG

**Summary: **Padmé's perspective as she watches Anakin leave to search for Shmi.

**Disclaimer:** George Lucas owns Padmé, Anakin, and any other non-original character/place/thing I mention, not me.  That's probably a good thing.  ;)

**Feedback / Hosting : **Sure!  Just drop me a line at hermione_skywalker@yahoo.com.****

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Something about the way he walks away chills me.

Something about the look in his eyes, the unnatural stiffness as he turns, the outward twitch of his cloak as he walks away... that he _doesn't _turn and steal a look at me.

The way the air seems to completely deaden once he disappears from view.

They bother me, because they're not _my _Ani, but they're not _what_ is bothering me, not entirely.

_My_ Ani.  I really have no right to think that.  We know well where both of us should be, and that means I can not be in a place where I can call him my own.  He has already left that place, or at least has certainly given it the old try.

And since doing so was when his nightmares came back.

They make me want to dive back into that place, just for a little while, and take him with me.  My steadfastness toward duty seems to mock me now, wondering if this emptiness from him and in me is satisfying replacement for what I've given up.

The only Ani that I can truly claim is the one who opened up to me, and I to him, for that small period ten years ago.  The little boy with an open face and spirit and pure motives, a little boy who missed and loved his mother, who wanted and needed comfort, and never asked for it.  The boy whose affections I _could_ freely accept and reciprocate, who I also gave up when I enforced the line that has to exist between Anakin and me.

Those feelings hold no place here, as they shouldn't have on Naboo.  And though I am by his side I now feel further from him than I have ever been.

When he was younger I feared our separation because I could no longer shield him from the world he didn't want to change around him.  Now that chance to protect him is here again, and that world strikes back at him in the cruelest way by taking away what he has already lost.  And I feel, selfishly, angry that yet something else I care about has been stripped away, that that innocence was stolen from him this way.

He in that and other ways is no longer my Ani.  And yet the part of him I always considered mine is still there, and in these past short weeks with him it's grown even more so, despite what I've tried (albeit not steadily) to avoid.

A long minute after he disappears up the stairs to the surface, I'm still standing there at the deathly silent kitchen table.  I don't remember having stood up.  Anakin's extended family hovers at the corner of my vision, watching me as if waiting for me to do something.

_I have to go.  I have to help her..._

_I'll go with you._

I stare toward that staircase again.

_Don't follow him.  He'd have given some indication if he wanted you there._

_Follow him.  You know he never asks for comfort even if he were dying for lack of it._

_Don't follow him.  He's certainly gone by now anyway._

_Follow him.  You love him too much to let him go._

The thought's not as much a jolt to me as it might have been several days ago.  A truth that though too quickly and intensely to be savored, came nonetheless.  He waited for me to say it, to say _something_ – 

_"Then you _do_ feel something!"_

It's not the issue.  Seeing that was the easiest part of this.  I can admit to myself now that I do love him, and that is the first step in moving past it.

As is never telling him that I feel that, so he can move on as well.

The Larses say nothing, their expressions as blank as the desert that I fear will soon consume Anakin... all that answers me is the thin wind, taunting so only _I_ can hear, that it will gladly take him from me again, as it took his mother.

I hear it laugh faintly as I dash up the stairs to the surface, that it's already taken him and with him that part of me he doesn't even know he possesses, to not ever return.

_You're too late..._

His shadow on the curving slope of the main dome of the house is the first thing I see; a formless, cold shell of him.  I don't look at it long, moving my eyes to the almost equally black, lightless form standing against the desert, spiked hair glinting bronze in the double sunset the only color from him.  He seems larger than life yet connected to it, to me, by only a shadow...

But he turns to me.  He takes a few steps toward me, but it's me who covers most of the distance between us, stopping just out of arm's reach – professional distance.  Several feet, several parsecs – there's really no difference.

The suns are to the side of us now, sheathing him one half in golden light and the other in shadow, hardened eyes staring at me - softening a bit, but their purpose no dimmer.  I could not stop him now even that I wish it – to deny him the resolution of self that threatens to elude me, and will forever do so if he does not return, or once we are forced to part ways.  I have denied him much – I won't do this.  I have been selfish enough for a lifetime, and it has made this moment much more difficult.

_You're going to have to stay here._

If I threw myself against you as you got on that speeder bike, would you stop me?

_These are good people, Padmé.  You'll be safe._

He truly has no idea that ever since that day in the meadow it's been perfectly clear whose safety I'm most concerned with, despite that I'm supposed to be the protected one?  When he fell off that shaak, lying so eerily still, that suddenly opened a door within me.  For the first time the possibility of a future where he didn't exist, had been taken from _my_ existence – it hit me, leaving me cold.

Empty.

_You'll be safe..._

And that was only the teasing.  This is real.  It's the strangest thing – I have faith in him, I know he is skilled and resourceful enough, familiar enough with this world that he can withstand anything this place might throw at him.

Then why is it that door is gaping wide again?

I suddenly despise this world even more, the one that first gave him to me and now threatens to take him back.

If he does return, but he _doesn't_ find her...?

I find I can't think that far; I can't imagine that the Force would be so callous as to give him these dreams, then have them only be a reminder of a failure.__

_As it gave you him, who it knows you can never have?_

Or should I feel guilty myself, knowing that if I had stepped up sooner, if we hadn't been playing on Naboo with feelings neither of us can ever reap the full joys of, he could have been here long before now?

I can't stop everything I feel, every selfish urge.  Something in me seeks release, ventilation – it gets it in his name slipping through my lips, the step forward and opening of arms that miraculously coincides with his own.  In that moment, in the arms enveloping me, the softening of eyes that have been hard since coming here, the face breathing hard into my hair and the crook of my neck, my Ani returns.

My arms around his neck, standing tiptoe to bury my face in his chest, holding him to me stronger than anything I ever have, so the little boy I've suddenly found again doesn't disappear from my sight.  His face buried in my neck as if for a moment he's hiding from what he's about to do and wants me to keep him there, arms completely around me, warm hands on my back stirring echoes of his touch before he kissed me.  We hold one another as if to merge ourselves into one seamless being, as our shadows did so effortlessly.  His presence surrounds me, filling me more than anything ever has.

He pulls away, just a little - still holding me, still gazing at me for a moment, again, just like before we kissed - and looking at him I suddenly feel moving on isn't worth it if he isn't in my life, isn't _possible_, and that hiding from him what I feel is pointless.  If he never comes back, if something happens to him, what good will it do either of us for him to believe I don't care, don't feel the same way he does -

_(to think his last thought, if it is of us, may be a lie...)_

And then he pulls his gaze from me, turns and walks away, and that's when I suddenly feel that door I felt in the meadow open again, its icy wind curling its fingers near my neck - or maybe it's just the evening chill.  In the instant as he turns I see some change, see that hardness again taking the place of the deep blue that always stirs my doubt when I deny where we are, makes me want him to look away.

Except now.  I want him to look back, look at me, so that kindness will return, so that door will close and I don't have to think about what my mind continues to show me through it.

_I won't be long._

The wind continues to laugh in my ears long after the desert swallows him completely.


End file.
